Contract Broken
by Queen of the Girl Scouts
Summary: Mai did love Zuko more than she feared Azula, but she feared death by lightning far less than her fate after the comet. — O/S. Repost.


**A/N:** I, electric gurrl, have made a separate account for my spontaneous oneshots, and drabbles, and such. There are so many ideas I have, and not all of them are my best, and I didn't want a flood on my main account. However, the majority of my work will still be there. This is one of those deleted oneshots.

 **Warnings:** Dark themes, dubcon.

* * *

" _Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else."  
\- George Orwell, 1984 -_

* * *

Mai sits in her prison cell and wonders why she is still alive. Ty Lee is punching a wall and sobbing and murmuring obscenities to herself occasionally, before shifting to kicking the wall after her knuckles become sore, but Mai is even more silent and expressionless than usual. It was not meant to happen like this.

Well, Mai is not sure how it was meant to happen. She came to the Boiling Rock with an entirely different purpose than the one she developed once everything started to click inside of her. Than the one that led her to this grim, bleak, festering cell.

"Why would you do that?" Ty Lee screams as she spins to face Mai, her words finally intelligible. "You... I mean, I'm a lover of romance, Mai, but you were just going to _die_ for Zuko. You've dated him for a few _months_. It's... I... you looked... how did you not think you would be killed?"

Mai swallows. Honesty has never been her specialty, even if she does not lie twice before breakfast like Azula. Nor has confessing her feelings ever been something she enjoyed. But she supposes it harms no one at this point, now that they are locked up for life, probably to be executed eventually.

"I wanted to die. Maybe. You don't understand anything at all, Ty Lee," Mai says calmly and Ty Lee shrieks while forming claws with her ruddy hands. "Thank you for saving me but you should've taken Azula and left. This wasn't supposed to involve you."

Ty Lee opens her mouth to ask, but she just turns away with a huffy sigh.

They remain in silence save for Ty Lee's feebly muffled sobs until the lights go out and they are expected to sleep.

[X]

As soon as Mai closes her eyes in her uncomfortable cot in the Boiling Rock, she wakes up. It feels as if she has slept, but she could not have. And then she realizes how strangely comfortable she is, and how rough blankets feel like silk.

At first, she has no idea where she is, she squints and looks around to find herself in an unfamiliar bedroom. Her first thought is to scream, before realizing she has probably been taken somewhere from the Boiling Rock. Somewhere very dark.

It is then that she realizes the obvious; this is _her_ bedroom and she starts to think that perhaps the Boiling Rock was a dream. But, no, no it could not have been. Something that elaborate and insane... she couldn't _make up_ Zuko getting himself intentionally _arrested_ after leaving her to face _this_ fate.

 _This fate..._

Mai gets up out of bed faster than she ever has in her life. She starts to walk through her house in a panic, not sure if she hopes this is a nightmare over the Boiling Rock.

"Where's Azula, where's Zuko, what's happening?" Mai demands of her mother and the elder woman is stunned by her daughter's genuine _emotion_.

Mother licks her lips before saying, "Azula is in the palace, where she usually is. Zuko is... gone."

Mai does not open her mouth to ask what _gone_ means, but she presumes that he is still with the Avatar. (Or was that her dream? Everything is so fuzzy and unclear.)

"Ty Lee, I need to find Ty Lee," Mai says hoarsely and mother swallows.

"I permit you to see your friend. Don't be gone long, though. Tomorrow is such a big day for you," mother says and Mai does not even fully comprehend the last part of her sentence as she dashes upstairs to dress herself and then moves at an even quicker pace through the clean, hot streets to get to Ty Lee's house.

She is embraced with the burst of the scent of cinnamon, and she feels cool, blissful relief in the tight hug of her friend. Hopefully Ty Lee will know _something_. She must know _something_.

"What's going on?" Mai asks and Ty Lee is stunned and confused by how disoriented she seems.

"Nothing. _Is_ there something going on?" Ty Lee asks, startled and stunned. And Mai swallows, suddenly realizing how absolutely insane she will sound if she tells Ty Lee why she is so confused and disoriented.

"No," Mai admits, keeping her face as calm and unreadable as possible. She cannot let anyone know why she is so confused and panicked. Nor can she show anyone that she is confused and panicked. "Do you... do you want to do something with me?"

"Oh, oh, we can go shopping for wedding accessories for you," Ty Lee says, clapping her hands excited with a wide grin. "Doesn't that sound fun?"

"Wedding?" Mai inquires before slowly swallowing. She does not need to ask who she's getting married to, and she honestly just wants to lie down on the floor. "It sounds intolerably boring. But whatever."

And so Ty Lee and Mai go to the shopping district and Mai bears Ty Lee's love for the material, and tries to figure out from any clues around her what could be happening.

"Is there any new news about Zuko?" Mai asks as they are both in a cramped and quiet dressing room. Ty Lee's eyes flash wide in fear at the mention of his name.

"Nothing. He was... I mean, you know he was involved in an escape from the Boiling Rock, but other than that, there isn't any new sign of him," Ty Lee says with a nervous expression she cannot hide. "It's probably best not to ask about him too much, you know? After the comet you're marrying Fire Lord Ozai and Zuko is... your... uh, never mind. That shirt doesn't fit you at all. Try this one."

Zuko is alive, Zuko escaped the Boiling Rock.

But Mai, Ty Lee and Azula never went there.

Mai hopes this reality is not as bad as it truly seems.

[X]

Mai has begun to panic. But, of course, she does not show it. And, of course, no one is aware that anything is wrong with her. If she were, she would be proclaimed crazy in an instant. Every night she goes to sleep in her bed and wakes up in the Boiling Rock, then goes to sleep in the Boiling Rock and wakes up in her bed.

It's terrifying, and she has no idea what the reality actually is. Or if her mind just snapped. Or if she's being brutally tortured in the Boiling Rock and has gone mad from it.

Her days in prison are dull as she goes through the routine motions with Ty Lee and her new Kyoshi Warrior friends. It is unpleasant, but it is not as unpleasant as her days with Azula, Ty Lee and the preparations for the sick wedding.

Death by lightning sounded more pleasant than living in this world. Mai had nothing left to live for, yet she somehow still got trapped. She can only hope that this is a dream... she can only hope.

Time goes on, isolation ticks by for Mai whether she is in the world with freedom and friendship or in the world where she is behind bars, and Sozin's Comet approaches in both worlds simultaneously, which leads her to believe that they are on the same timeline.

[X]

The comet come first in the world where Mai is with Azula and Ty Lee. It streaks across the sky, stunning and beautiful. Mai stares at it and waits until Zuko or the Avatar shows up. They have to, inevitably.

Mai is in her home, in her bed, trying to force herself to go to sleep for the entirety of it. Ty Lee is at Azula's coronation, but Mai wants to sleep, she wants to leave this world. So desperately.

At last, the sleeping herbs she took set in, and she drifts off and wakes.

In this world, the comet comes and Mai leaves prison. The Avatar wins, and balance is restored. As soon as Mai is liberated, she kisses Zuko fiercely on the lips, wrapping herself in his arms. She loves him.

But that night, she has to go to sleep, even if she does not want to.

When Mai wakes, she learns that Zuko died during an Agni Kai with Azula for the throne. Mai sits with the royal family, her new family, and Ozai is gazing at her for far too long, with eyes that make her feel bare and exposed.

"You look disturbed," Ozai says all too calmly, and she has to admit she is relieved he said something, despite how angry and confused she is. "You can't have taken Zuko so harshly. You'll... forget him, eventually."

Azula averts her eyes and Mai studies her for a moment. The princess is wringing her hands and clawing at her knees beneath the table, and Mai thinks for a moment that perhaps Azula is taking Zuko harshly as well.

"He broke up with me anyway," Mai lies, even though the note does not seem to matter so much now that he could be gone.

Zuko is dumb. He is clueless and has a thousand complexes, but Mai loves him. She loves him and she will never love the man examining her from behind his glass of expensive wine.

Mai cannot bring herself to eat, as she has no appetite.

[X]

After the comet, after Zuko dies, Mai does not wake up in the other world, the one where Zuko is alive and the comet brought balance instead of destruction. And she wonders if that was the dream, if her pleasant dreams have ceased and _this_ disgusting world is her reality. She goes through the motions every day, trying to tolerate Azula and Ty Lee. Trying to tolerate the fact that her wedding is in only a few days.

So this is how it ends? With Zuko dead and Mai wedding the man who might as well have killed him. With Mai forced to be friends with Azula after what she did, even though she wants to do what she did at the Boiling Rock. She wants to fight Azula, wants to rebel, but the situation she is in makes her too nervous to do anything too drastic.

She does not want to upset the timeline of this world, and her mental state is not nearly well enough to cope with the ramifications of standing up to Azula, Ozai and the people forcing her down.

But Mai does wake up, at last, in the world she wants to be in. And this time, she is in the Fire Nation, which makes her panic until she sees Zuko there with her, alive and well. She hides her relief, refusing to let anyone know what is happening to her.

"I'm... I'm Fire Lord," Zuko admits quietly and Mai's eyes flash with surprise. She wonders what she missed while she was away.

(does a Mai live in this world as well?)

"It's great," Mai says, remembering that the right people succeeded during the comet in this world, and now everything is... it's perfect.

It's perfect and Mai desperately longs for this to be real.

She tries to remember his coronation but it is nonexistent. And then she wonders if this is a sign that this world is not real. But, as she and Zuko agree never to break up again, and look out over the world that is theirs, she thinks that, if it is a dream, she never wants to wake up.

But she does. She does wake up, and she wakes up on the last day of her life.

The day she will marry Fire Lord Ozai.

[X]

Mai's wedding is something she wishes she could end. She contemplated going to take a nap somewhere at the reception, to try to escape just for a little while to her other world with Zuko. But she has been kept on her toes for the entirety of the lengthy ceremony in the summer swelter, and now in the even hotter ballroom.

She drinks her wine, she tries to focus on the entertainment and Azula and Ty Lee, who seem to have latched onto each other and forgotten her entirely. Mai supposes she has been distant, even more distant than she once was. Mai cannot bring herself to attach to anyone, because she does not want this world to be real.

The reception ends, Mai feels as if she is on a march to her execution.

(she wonders briefly if she is in the Boiling Rock, and she is being taken to her execution and is hallucinating)

(but as soon as she reaches the beautiful bedroom where she will spend her wedding night, she does not think that it is a hallucination)

(as much as she would have liked to have just been blindfolded against a wall and put out of her misery)

There is only one consolation as Mai sits on the crimson bed and stares at her feet. When she goes to sleep, she will be in another world, a better world. And, to be honest, she is beginning to become afraid of which one is real. She hopes that it isn't this one.

She would give _anything_ to live in her dreams... or her reality, or... it is all complicated.

They both are real. They both are real and Mai does not think there is any true escape.

He comes to her, examining her and she feels exposed, stripped raw in her dark red underwear. She is sure she looks beautiful, she is sure she looks appetizing and desirable to him. And his lips twitch with a small smirk, watching her at his mercy.

The certain sadism about it unnerves her, as she realizes that she is now going to be married to this man, that Zuko is dead in this world, and that half of her life... _maybe her whole life_... will be this.

"You look beautiful," he remarks and Mai opens her lips to speak, and then closes them. "I don't want you to be angry or afraid or... not that you seem to have a wide range of emotions, but... I have no intentions to hurt you."

Mai bites her lower lip and wonders if she believes that or not. She has always been skeptical of people's intentions, but now she no longer even trusts her own mind, what with the two worlds she lives in.

"I appreciate that," Mai finally replies, her tone flat, her pulse as contained as she can keep it.

"It won't be bad. Not just tonight," he says and she just remains silent after that remark.

He walks to her and soon they are close, their bodies nearly touching and she does not know why she is so afraid. Maybe this world isn't real. She lets him run his hands around her, exploring her body, his fingertips finally resting on her breasts.

She swallows and decides to surrender. It is just easier. She gives in, and once she goes to sleep, things will be right again. He kisses her neck and her lack of response seems to annoy him for a moment, but he slowly pins her onto her back, climbing on top of her in a single motion.

It is slow and tender then and she begins to enjoy herself, which she supposes is the best she can make of this world she is stuck in until she sleeps. His lips, fingers and tongue on her body give her slight shivers of pleasure that she cannot deny.

Her clothes come off, his come off, it progresses and she supposes it would be heated if she were not trying to persuade herself that it is nothing but a vivid dream.

But it is real.

Mai wakes up after falling asleep in moderate pain beside her new husband. And she is curled in bed, the sunlight trickling through the window as she looks at who is beside her, and it is not the monster who bedded her on her wedding night.

Zuko is asleep, and she kisses his cheek gently.

 _"I hope you're real,"_ she wants to say, but she cannot give away the torment she lives, for fear that none will believe her.

She presses her body against his and he smiles faintly.

He feels real too.

It is beautiful, and happy.

And it is real.


End file.
